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Climate Panel Charts Options for Renewable Energy

By Andrew C. Revkin May 9, 2011 9:30 amMay 9, 2011 9:30 am

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has issued the summary of its first report on the potential role of renewable forms of energy, from dams to wind turbines and solar panels, in cutting emissions of greenhouse gases in coming decades.

The document doesn’t take readers much beyond what is already well established: that without sustained and focused climate and energy policies by governments around the world, the potential of renewable energy technologies to compete with fossil fuels remains deeply limited.

The report, as with all output from the climate panel, is incredibly constrained by the mandate of the organization, which is to be policy relevant, but policy neutral. The result is a suite of 160 clean and neat “what if” scenarios, but very little (at least if the summary reflects what’s coming in the full 900-page report at the end of the month) on how the more aggressive scenarios for cleaning up the global energy supply might actually be achieved in the real world of competing and conflicting national, corporate and personal interests.

The summary, for example, barely mentions natural gas, even though it is hard to find an energy analyst these days who does not see low natural gas prices, now foreseen for decades to come, as deeply undercutting prospects for expanded deployment of renewable energy sources (let alone nuclear power).

This is not the fault of the authors; it’s just the reality of how the countries that chartered this effort set up the ground rules.

In the video summary above, shot at the Abu Dhabi meeting where the report was completed, Ottmar Edenhofer, co-chairman of the climate panel’s division studying options for cutting greenhouse gas emissions, says the energy future is entirely in the hands of policy makers: “Without dedicated national energy policies we will not see an increasing deployment of renewables.”

Here are the core findings, as listed in the summary:

– Of the around 300 Gigawatts (GW) of new electricity generating capacity added globally between 2008 and 2009, 140 GW came from renewable energy.

– Despite global financial challenges, renewable energy capacity grew in 2009—wind by over 30 percent; hydropower by three percent; grid-connected photovoltaics by over 50 percent; geothermal by 4 percent; solar water/heating by over 20 percent and ethanol and biodiesel production rose by 10 percent and 9 percent respectively.

– Most of the reviewed scenarios estimate that renewables will contribute more to a low carbon energy supply by 2050 than nuclear power or fossil fuels using carbon capture and storage (CCS).

– The technical potential of renewable energy technologies exceeds the current global energy demand by a considerable amount—globally and in respect of most regions of the world.

– Under the scenarios analyzed in-depth, less than 2.5 percent of the globally available technical potential for renewables is used—in other words over 97 percent is untapped underlining that availability of renewable source will not be a limiting factor.

– Accelerating the deployment of renewable energies will present new technological and institutional challenges, in particular integrating them into existing energy supply systems and end use sectors.

– According to the four scenarios analyzed in detail, the decadal global investments in the renewable power sector range from 1,360 to 5,100 billion US dollars to 2020 and 1,490 to 7,180 billion US dollars for the decade 2021 to 2030. For the lower values, the average yearly investments are smaller than the renewable power sector investments reported for 2009.

– A combination of targeted public policies allied to research and development investments could reduce fuel and financing costs leading to lower additional costs for renewable energy technologies.

– Public policymakers could draw on a range of existing experience in order to design and implement the most effective enabling policies–there is no one-size-fits-all policy for encouraging renewables.

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By 2050 or so, the human population is expected to pass nine billion. Those billions will be seeking food, water and other resources on a planet where humans are already shaping climate and the web of life. Dot Earth was created by Andrew Revkin in October 2007 -- in part with support from a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship -- to explore ways to balance human needs and the planet's limits.